How many of you have done IT? You know the IT I’m talking about. You looked at an application, interviewed the candidate, had a bit of an unsettled feeling about him or her but hired them anyway. IT may be a few days, a few weeks or a few months later but IT becomes a reality, buyer’s remorse. You hired someone who turns out to be a dud. It may be they are calling out of work on a regular basis or perhaps they aren’t following directions on tasks you are assigning them. It may be that you think they are stealing money or merchandise from you. Whatever the problem you just wish you hadn’t hired this person. It is frustrating to make those types of employment decisions, but don’t feel like your small retail store is all alone because you have to make these hiring choices yourself. It even happens to big companies that have Human Resources departments dedicated to trying to hire and retain the best employees.

There are things the smaller store owners and managers can do to try to improve their chances of hiring good applicants for their stores:

• First and foremost, if you aren’t doing background checks consider hiring Loss Prevention Systems Inc. (LPSi) to do them for you. Their team can dig into a candidate’s past to verify they aren’t hiding important information from you. They can do criminal background checks, verify employment, validate driving records, and so much more. By having a background check company conduct pre-employment screenings on your candidates you also protect your business from potential liability lawsuits if your employee were to harm someone while acting as a representative of your business.
• When you are reviewing applications look for red flags on the application itself. This could be a significant gap between jobs. While a month up to three months may be explained as just a difficult time finding employment, more than that may be a cause for concern but not necessarily a deal breaker on its own.
• Look for brief periods of employment or a pattern of going from one job to another, sometimes known as job hopping. While some of this may be expected from a teenager or a college student who may have to find summer work between spring and Fall Semesters it should not be the case for someone out of school for a year or so. Job hopping could indicate someone who has problems at work either with the job itself or the manager. It could also indicate someone who has been stealing and quit before being caught.
• If your application asks if a former employer may be contacted, look out when the applicant indicates “no” and/or leaves the former supervisor’s name off of the application. There could be a reason they don’t want you to contact that employer.
• When conducting interviews look for the way the applicant dresses. Regardless of how casual the atmosphere of a business may be it should still be expected that an applicant will come to the interview in at least business casual attire. If an applicant does not care enough to make an attempt to impress the boss in an interview it is highly unlikely they will attempt to impress the boss in their job performance.
• Look for eye contact from the applicant during an interview. Some people do not know how to interview, have been out of the workforce for a while or may just be nervous so some glancing around is to be expected. On the other hand, there should be some eye contact and if it seems the person is avoiding it, you should consider this a red flag.
• Cell phones! While they seem to be a necessity of life, they do have an off button. If your candidate fails to mute a phone and it goes off during an interview let it raise a flag. If the applicant asks if you mind if they take the call, I suggest you end the interview at that point. Very few life and death matters take place during an interview. It is more a matter of poor planning. They didn’t take time to mute their phone, turn it off or tell someone where they would be at the time of the interview. If you aren’t more important than that phone during an interview you won’t be more important when they start working for you.

When you hire someone you invest a lot of time and money in them. When you have to get rid of them you start the whole process over and invest more money. Don’t throw good money after bad, recognize red flags and hire right the first time.